Caltech Shatters Internet Speed Record: 186 Gbps

As if I couldn't hate my ISP any more, researchers at the SuperComputing 2011 conference set a new internet speed record transferring data with a combined rate of 186 Gbps, 67 Gbps faster than the previous record set in 2009.

To put that in perspective, that's fast enough to transfer 2,000,000 gigabytes a day, or 100,000 Blu-ray disks. The team behind the record was led by Caltech, but also included physicists, computer scientists, and engineers from the University of Victoria in British Columbia, the University of Michigan, Florida International University, and CERN to name a few.

The new record was set using a 100 Gbps network setup by Canada's Advanced Research and Innovation Network between the University of Victoria Computing Centre in BC, and the Washington State Convention Centre in Seattle. That combined rate of 186 Gbps includes 98 Gbps sent in one direction, and 88 Gbps sent in the other, breaking the previous record of 119 Gbps set back in 2009.

Besides making for great PR and blog fodder, the record was partially sponsored by CERN who are looking for more effective ways to distribute the petabytes of data coming from the Large Hadron Collider so it can be analysed by researchers around the world. Particularly since they anticipate that data volume to increase a thousand-fold once they really crank up their collider in the coming years. [Caltech via ExtremeTech]

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